I have discussed here many times the perils of describing what it is you do when you're "freelance" and you juggle a few different jobs.

This week, things got a little more transparent for me: I became a proper writer (ie I am on the books somewhere other than the tax department) and, rather surprisingly for those of us who are me, I also became a lawyer.

Apparently, although I had no idea, I have in fact been a lawyer for some time. Apparently, according to my very knowledgeable dinner party host last night (who also cooks a mean roast and forcefeeds her guests chocolate) I have been a lawyer since I graduated from, well, my law degree. You see, technically speaking, according to the Legal Profession Act, "lawyer" means not that you practice law, or that you are trained to be a lawyer, but that you have a law degree. So here I was, laughing at lawyer jokes and insisting that even though I studied law I'm not a lawyer, and I HAVE BEEN A LAWYER ALL ALONG.

As you can imagine, this is quite a shock to the system.

Firstly, it means, according to my reckoning, that I am owed at least nine (possibly ten or eleven) trillion dollars. Think of all the lost revenue! Not ONCE have I charged myself out at $4K just to write a letter. Not once have I sent someone a bill after speaking with them on the telephone for half an hour. I have NEVER been flown to Sydney for a four day drinking binge as part of a "team building excercise", and I have until now never felt qualified to use sentences consisting mostly of acronyms.

Oh, shoosh. I can see all my lawyer friends frowning at me through the internet. As the homophobes say, some of my best friends are... etc.

Although this new professional tag does significant damage to my bohemian identity (I'm a fairly Cool Cat, I don't know if you've heard) it also causes a bit of an internal crisis. When I go to the theatre, should I sit in my black skivvy with my legs crossed peering over my glasses and tick ticking that the "London version was so much better" before having a crafty ciggie in the back lane and glugging the free wine and stealing toilet paper at interval? Or should I turn up in a suit, laugh loudly at the linguistic puns and then fall asleep because I've had three hours sleep since last Thursday?

Next I'll discover I'm a qualified vet on account of once having owned a goldfish.

Seems about as sensible.

And to the thousands of people who guessed the answer to yesterday's post, yes, the For We Are Young And Free flyer was in Kath and Kim on Sunday night. Very exciting claim to fame.